NEW DELHI: In a fresh standoff with the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the International Boxing Association (IBA) – the sport’s global governing body – has warned its ‘Technical Officials’ from officiating in any of the IOC-sanctioned tournaments, which will act as an qualification pathway to the Paris Olympics in 2024. IBA’s Development Officer, Chris Roberts OBE, has written a letter to the technical officials, reminding them of rules governing the boxing sport and threatening action in case they officiate in any the IOC-backed boxing qualifiers.
“We refer to the communication of yesterday from the IOC, in particular, the Paris 2024 Boxing Unit (PBU), whereby you may have been invited to declare your intentions to act as volunteer technical official for the respective P24 qualification competition and boxing tournament (both IOC tournaments) and granted a deadline until March 21 2023 to complete and submit your application. In this regard, I would like to remind all Technical Officials reference the Rule 1.6.2 of the IBA Technical and Competition Rules. 1.6.2. National Federation, their teams, individual boxers or the competition official are forbidden to participate in an international tournament which is not approved in advance by IBA. The ‘International Tournament’ in the T&C rules ‘means any boxing competition where boxers from different national federations compete”,” Roberts wrote in his mail.
